This invention relates to dispensers for self-stick labels removably stuck on one side of a flexible carrier strip in a row extending longitudinally along the strip. The labels are normally stuck on the strip by pressure-sensitive adhesive, and when the strip is deflected sharply enough away from the labels, the strip peels from the labels leaving them free to be stuck to objects to be labeled, via the adhesive.
A dispenser for such labels conventionally has a forwarding device for forwardly moving the strip while carrying the labels, and a strip deflector on which the forwardly moving strip is deflected or bent away from the labels sharply enough to peel the strip from the labels. The forwarding device is normally operated intermittently so that the labels are intermittently dispensed. The dispenser usually includes a presser for pressing the labels on the objects, after the labels are freed from their carrier strip.
Examples of such dispensers are provided by the following U.S. patents:
Satas U.S. Pat. No. 3,231,446 dated Jan. 25, 1966 PA1 Kind et al. U.S. Pat. No. 3,265,553 dated Aug. 9, 1966 PA1 Kaplan U.S. Pat. No. 3,420,172 dated Jan. 7, 1969 PA1 Schrotz et al. U.S. Pat. No. 3,674,609 dated July 4, 1972
The dispensers of all of these patents show the characteristic prior art arrangement wherein the strip carrying the labels is pulled around the strip deflector by the strip forwarding device which is located behind the deflector in the sense that the strip meets the deflector first before engagement with the forwarding device. There are various kinds of strip forwarding devices, but in all instances the purpose is to engage the strip and pull it under tension over and around the strip deflector which itself may be anything bending the pulled strip sharply enough to peel the strip from the labels.
The above described characteristic prior art arrangement has objectionable operational drawbacks. Conventionally the strip carrying the labels is in the form of a supply coil which must be positioned in the dispenser and its leading end initially threaded to put the dispenser initially into operation, and one drawback is that these prior art dispensers require a relatively long length of the strip to be manually pulled around the deflector and engaged with the strip forwarding device behind the deflector, this operation requiring time-consuming training of the operators of the dispensers.
Another drawback is that even though the threading operation is properly done, the length of strip carrying the labels which must be fed from the supply coil over the deflector and back to the strip fowarding device behind the deflector, is necessarily of undesirable extent, all of the labels on this length representing label waste at least, and in the case of a forwarding device which cannot effectively engage the carrier strip while carrying the labels, a time waste occasioned by the necessity to manually remove and waste the labels from the strip's length required for engagement with the forwarding device.
Still another drawback is that the described label waste is unpredictable, depending on the person who must put the dispenser into initial operation. This interferes with business management practices requiring knowledge of the number of labels fixed to the objects labeled. In other words, although a supply coil may be known to contain a certain number of labels, there is no way to assure the management that that number of labels has been applied to a corresponding number of objects.